www.itworks3d.com will be releasing the E3D Titan Aero toolheads for LulzBot Mini very soon!
The E3D Titan Aero allows you to print both solid and flexible filaments without changing toolheads.
Upgrade to hardened parts, and you can also print abrasive filaments like Proto Pasta Carbon Fiber PLA
Check out this video of a test print with the 1.75mm filament version:

3d print of a combat robot chassis in translucent green INOVA-1800 filament and cubic infill. I didn’t start out to have it look like a snake- the pupils in the engraved eyes were originally round, but when I saw another print of the wheel skirts and noticed the reptile pattern, I hopped back in Fusion 360 and quickly changed them to snake eyes!

The LulzBot Mini made a beautiful print, and the build volume was “just right” for a plastic ant. A good rule of thumb- If you need a LulzBot TAZ‘s build volume, your ant is going to be too heavy (ask me how I know..).

Angle view to show infill pattern

I created the model in Autodesk Fusion 360 (free for maker / student / non-commercial use!!) which has been an easy to use yet staggeringly powerful 3D modeling tool for quickly iterating through designs. The cloud sync makes it a snap to move between computers!

Side view- check out those nice unsupported overhangs!

The key to is the infill pattern. I was experimenting with different infill patterns in the new CURA 2 LulzBot Edition Alpha and chose cubic for it’s strength. By happy accident, the combination of the translucent green INOVA-1800 and cubic infill yielded this cool pattern! Pictured don’t really do it justice as the surface is shiny, and the pattern shifts as it catches the light.

The Problem: Kitchen chairs!

Our kitchen chairs were what my Granny would have called, catywompus! The plastic feet inserts broke over the years , but when we thought we would just add new ones, we discovered they were custom to the chair. After much searching online, I found a whole lot of nothing. I decided to save myself the hassle and hand Jamie a chair foot so that he could draw up a design in Tinkercad! A couple of days later he handed me back a 3D printed chair foot, very similar to the one I originally gave him!

It snapped in easy peasy! Jamie printed off enough for the rest of the chairs and ten minutes of install later our chairs were no longer ‘catywompus’. Easiest home improvement/fix up ever!! I am slowly discovering that having a 3D printer comes in quite handy for around the house stuff and making parts that you may otherwise have to have custom-made. That, and it’s just a lot of fun!!

How To:
For this project Jamie used a Lulzbot Mini 3D Printer and black ABS filament. At first we considered using a flexible filament called Ninja Flex, but decided against it. I was concerned that with it being flexible and sort of ‘grabby’ for lack of a better description, that it would be difficult to move across the hardwood floors. The ABS is a tough and smoother filament and moved easily on the floor, although in the end I’m not sure if that mattered because I put furniture sliders on top of the chair feet.

If you have broken things around your house or little broken parts that are difficult to come by, you may be able to design a replacement yourself and 3D print it, just as we did these chair feet.

Fun with 3D printing, because who doesn’t need a laser cat?! This file can be found at Thingiverse The original laser cat looks much like the one below, but as 3D Printing goes there is always a lot of fun to be had with tinkering around with designs! Someone added lasers to the poor laser’less cat here